Words Kirk Truman Illustrations Alice Chiariello If you recall one of our earlier issues this year, you’ll remember illustrator and artist Alice Chiariello’s Walking feature back in May. Originally from the South of France, Alice is now based in Bloomsbury and uses her talents to capture the character and spirit of the neighbourhood’s architecture. For this issue, Alice has chosen to focus on the area’s less travelled corners, the secret places most people may be unaware of.

Words Matthew Ross Photography Kirk Truman “I always tell other people that having the opportunity to make the work you want to make has to be success.” From a Jerusalem rooftop, a camera looks across the West Bank towards the Jordanian mountains. It records time. Far away, the peak of Mount Nebo, where Moses stood to view the Promised Land. Closer, the Mount of Olives, the West Bank, the impassive trees of Israeli Jerusalem. Pixel by…

Words & Illustrations Sophie Pelissier “When you study your art or your craft you aren’t taught how to run a business…” There is an air of quiet industriousness down the wooden hallways of Cockpit Arts. You could be forgiven for thinking the ghosts of the original 1920s furniture workshop were still working behind the studio doors were it not for glimpses of colourful textiles, bold typography, or polished ceramics. True to its legacy of craft manufacturing,…

Words Cathi Unsworth Photography Etienne Gilfillan “I never had the opportunity to go to university or the desire to… I became a jack-of-all-trades and wheeler-dealer.” When Roger K. Burton first stepped inside The Horse Hospital on the Colonnade, it was not a pretty sight. “The building had been unused for about 10 years when my friend Guy Adams found it on a recce to Bloomsbury in 1993. When we first got in the door there were…

Words & Photography Etienne Gilfillan Russell Square is Bloomsbury’s watering hole, where all creatures great and small converge. Some live locally, others just come to peer at the neighbours and sniff out the competition. From a Greek-food loving pooch to a paper-shredding parrot, this autumn Journal comes face to face with Bloomsbury’s cosmopolitan creatures.

Words & Photography Etienne Gilfillan David Moore is a man unafraid of a floral pattern and a huge fan of the Human League – two facts I discovered almost simultaneously as he greeted me, decked out in a fedora and colourful shirt, at his Fitzrovia restaurant Pied à Terre. I found him thumbing through a selection of vinyl albums, one of which was the relatively obscure early Human League offering Travelogue. It’s always nice to find…

Words Sophie Pelissier Portraits Etienne Gilfillan It’s a Saturday morning in June, and the Bloomsbury cafes are filling up with brunch orders and locals doing their weekend coffee-and-croissant run. Runners pound up and down Lamb’s Conduit Street and the small shops are beginning to open for summer trading. But further down the quieter Regency streets I find that milliner Karen Henriksen is already at work in her little studio. “I don’t mind it,” she says with a…

Words & Photography Kirk Truman “You know, the Greek tradition and culture of cultivating, preparing and sharing food is a ritual to us…” George Nyfoudis, founder of The Life Goddess, is giving me a lesson in Greek culture and cuisine. Bear with me here because I’m going to start by telling you how we ended our conversation – with the legend of The Life Goddess. According to ancient Greek legend, a sacred goat named Amalthea nurtured…

Words Kirk Truman Illustrations Alice Chiariello Originally from the south of France, Bloomsbury-based illustrator and artist Alice Chiariello has turned her talents to capturing the spirit of her adopted home. In this series of illustrations, she uses the streets and landmarks of the neighbourhood as a backdrop to scenes of everyday life in this corner of the capital.

Words & Photography Kirk Truman “…too beautiful and too romantic to survive.” This is no ordinary hotel. It’s a London icon, a spectacle; there’s something undeniably romantic about the sight of its fairy-tale towers rising above the eastern end of Euston Road. If its distinctive red exterior is High Victorian splendour, then its interior is the stuff of gilded fantasy – at every turn it reveals some new treasure. The Midland Grand Hotel, now once again…

Words & Portraits Etienne Gilfillan “As I get older I realise I absolutely love the Ancient Egyptian aesthetic,” says Gillian Mosely. “That’s the art I choose to collect. Maybe it’s a past life thing.” Reincarnated or not, her current life has certainly encompassed a wide variety of interests and passions. Though Mosely was born in London, her parents emigrated to the States when she nine. While returning to the UK as a visitor over the…

Words Matthew Ross Illustrations Sophie Pellisser Stroll past the tall white walls at the north side of Guilford Place and you might hear the innocent racket of children at play coming from Coram Fields, the protected children’s park and playground. Two centuries ago, you might have heard a different strain: from an imposing Georgian edifice, the swell of an organ and children trebling the remorseful hymn: Left on the world’s bleak waste forlorn; In sin…

Words Matthew Ross Photography Kirk Truman 51 Lamb’s Conduit Street, May 1706: On a site that was lately fields of cress and winter rocket, Mr Jos Walker takes the very first lease on four handsome storeys of London stock townhouse. For seven pounds, nine shillings and sixpence a year, his tenant will be a certain Mr Chisledon. 51 Lamb’s Conduit Street, October 2015: The Rugby School Estate grants the lease of the same handsome townhouse…